Weathering
Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Director
A physician begins with, “At your age . . .,” and misses the infection that’s causing my pain.
A middle-aged person who comes to our house to fix an appliance asks, in an effort to make conversation, “What sort of work did you do?”
A younger companion takes my elbow in a crosswalk. I look at them, surprised, and move my arm to my side. A newscaster enthuses about a “65-year-old woman” accomplishing regular things like starting a business or heating her house with wood. I yell at the radio, so what if she’s 65?
I try to be gracious in the face of increasing bias about my age. Sometimes it’s annoying. Sometimes it’s truly discouraging. Sometimes, like with that doctor, it’s meant months without help for real threats to my wellbeing. I know most people mean well, but I’m already tired of it.
Then I imagine the volume of my experience turned all the way up. I imagine living in a racialized body, an entire lifetime on alert, generations of ignorance, insult, and far worse. I imagine being transgender, and hearing political leaders call for my eradication.
I think of Denver city council candidate Chris Hinds heaving himself out of his wheelchair onto a debate stage last month. There was no ramp, and organizers suggested he crawl. Being on that stage was the only way to participate in the debate, and participating in the debate made Hinds eligible for substantial campaign funding from the city. “It was a choice,” he said, “between my campaign’s viability or my dignity.”
Constantly being denied dignity, confronting bigotry, discrimination, and barriers, even bearing threats to one’s very existence, is exhausting. It’s debilitating. It’s literally sickening. And yet, writes public health and social justice scholar Arline Geronimus, it’s also ordinary.
Geronimus has been steadily gathering and sharing evidence of this phenomenon for decades, coining the term, weathering, to describe it. Her work has long informed public health policy and activism, and her new book, Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, puts it all together for the first time in a non-academic form.
Geronimus began her work amassing evidence of illness and death directly linked to weathering for Black Americans. Her book deepens an understanding of the impact of weathering for people of color, as well as others who face chronic discrimination, barriers, and bigotry. One example: Half of rural Kentuckians living in generational poverty will not reach the age of 50 without disability linked to weathering.
The causes of death associated with weathering are not, as is often assumed, addiction or violence. Weathering kills through diseases like cancer or heart disease. It’s not eased by self-care or success, either. On the contrary, writes physician Farrah Jarral, the evidence Geronimus presents suggests that, “the effects of weathering are even more pronounced for those who exercise grit, resilience and determination in the face of prejudice.”
I’ve gleaned all this from reading reviews, and some of Geronimus’ academic work. I’m eager to learn more when I read her book after it’s released next week. Meanwhile, I’m reminded that millions of people are moving through life chronically bruised, injured and ill from injustice.
There’s work to do, policy work and structural change, change in education and organizations, in government and community, to address the sources of those injuries, and to heal them. There’s also work to in the everyday, person-by-person, especially when those injuries are aggravated by missteps and mistakes, honest ignorance and bias, and by forgetting.
That’s brought to mind a mistake I make sometimes, as a sort of metaphor. I forget, or I don’t know, that a friend has, for example, an injured shoulder. I sling my arm over that shoulder, or lean in for a hug. When I do, I hurt them. My friend may cry out or speak to me sharply. They may shy away. They might even be mad. That fact that I didn’t mean them harm doesn’t diminish the pain I’ve caused.
At my best, I apologize sincerely. If I’ve forgotten the injury, I apologize for forgetting too. If I honestly didn’t know they were injured, I express regret that I didn’t know. I assure my friend I won’t do it again. If they ask for ice, I go get ice. If they need some space from me, I step aside.
It would do no good to dwell on my intention, or my honest not knowing that shoulder was sore. It would be awful to get mad at them for hurting, or to question whether their pain is real.
But that’s exactly what happens, far too often, to people who suffer from weathering. When it does, it only makes things worse.
Besides my work with the ILI, besides advocacy, writing, and teaching, what can I do about weathering? I can continue the work of understanding the impacts of weathering, sharpening what Geronimus calls a “weathering lens,” but there are too many injuries to know them all. So, inevitably, I will cause harm. I’ll use an incorrect pronoun, or a word I didn’t know has a painful cultural history. I’ll act on a bias I didn’t even know I had.
When I do, I’ll resist any impulse to defend myself or my intentions, or worse, to diminish the pain.
I’ll remember to offer what harm requires: a focus on the person who is in pain, a sincere apology, compassion, and commitment to not do it again.
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CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism,’ Crowd Goes Wild. Anya Zoledziowski. Vice News. 3/6/23
GOP Gov Candidate Calls For ‘Firing Squad’ For Trans Rights Supporters, Political Foes. Ashton Pittman. Mississippi Free Press. 3/25/22.
“Humiliating”: Denver City Council candidate had to crawl on debate stage due to lack of wheelchair access. Conrad Swanson. The Denver Post. 2/15/2023.
Weathering by Arline Geronimus review – how discrimination makes you sick. Farah Jarral. The Guardian. 3/17/23.
Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society. Dr. Arline T Geronimus. Hatchett Book Group. March 2023.